This invention relates to the construction of wood framed buildings or buildings in which prefabricated walls are set upon a subfloor and rotated to a vertical position. This improved device is an inexpensive and safe aid to properly locating the wall and accurately raising it into position.
In the construction of wood framed buildings it is known that metal brackets can aid in securing one member to another and increasing the strength of the structure and speed of assembly. It is also well known that walls of such a structure can be more efficiently fabricated when lying flat and then raised into position. However, the construction industry has wrestled with the instability of the prefabricated wooden stud walls while they are raised into position. The horizontal stringer, sole plate, on the bottom of the stud wall tends to slip or slide when the top of the stud wall is raised so that blocks have to be nailed to the subfloor to hold it, see Reynolds U.S. Pat. No. 5,833,430, or at least one worker must hold the bottom horizontal stringer, sole plate, in position. Blocks, such as suggested in Reynolds, pose a safety hazard to workmen traversing the subfloor so they cannot be set in place in advance. This problem also exists in the hinge and shelf system disclosed in Roelofsz U.S. Pat. No. 5,444,944 and Stevens U.S. Pat. No. 3,328,859.
The modular construction industry utilized two leg flat single plate hinges and flexible hinge bands for reducing the dimensions of a modular building""s roof, see Danford U.S. Pat. No. 4,179,857 and Kaveckis U.S. Pat. No. 4,976,075, but the units still had to be realigned when set into final position.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device which is inexpensive to manufacture, easy to use in wood frame construction and able to be pre-positioned and the wooden stud wall fabricated in place at the job site and method to utilize it. This invention satisfies these objectives in that it is made from a single sheet of metal and can be stamped or cut out thereof by any standard means, boxed, shipped and stored so as to minimize space requirements. On the construction site, the invention can be prepositioned on the subfloor. When the wooden stud wall is ready to be fabricated, the horizontal stringer, sole plate, at the bottom of the wooden stud wall can be nailed to the two outer legs and the wooden stud wall constructed flat on the subfloor and then raised to the vertical and the invention is left in place. Of course, the wooden stud wall can be fabricated at another location and then brought to and nailed to the two outer legs before being raised to vertical.
The preferred embodiment of the device, Wall Hinge, is comprised of a flat metal plate having a bottom plate, three legs cut from one side, with the wider outer legs"" inside edges being tapered, i.e. wider at the end farthest from the bottom plate, while the sides of the center leg remain parallel and perpendicular to the bottom plate. The bottom plate has round holes therein to accommodate nails and the legs each have elongated holes to accommodate nails therein, and the outer legs have at least one round hole near the end away from the bottom plate to accommodate a nail therein, so that the Wall Hinge can be placed upon the subfloor of a wood framed home under construction in juxtaposition that the snapped chalk line to set the location of the stud wall on the sub floor transects the point of joinder of the legs to the bottom plate, and the bottom plate and center leg nailed to the subfloor while the outer legs are perpendicular thereto and nailed to the underside of the horizontal stringer, sole plate, at the bottom of the wooden stud wall.
The novel features of the invention and method for its use will be best understood from the following description in light of the accompanying drawings. While particular embodiments of the present invention are shown and described, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that changes and modifications may be made without departing from this invention in its broader aspects and, therefore, the aim of the appended claims is to cover all such changes and modifications as fall within the true spirit and scope of this invention.